Bicycle Tours in East Taiwan

For the first time ever, Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau is cooperating with the governments of Hualien and Taitung counties to host the inaugural Taiwan Cycling Festival. The festival will be held in mid-October, and it is a new theme activity of the Tour Taiwan series, which is promoted by the director general of Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau to bolster Taiwan’s travel industry.

So far, 19 teams from 10 different countries, including the Rabobank Pro Team, have signed up to participate in the International Highways race.

Taiwan is known as the “Kingdom of Bicycles” and has always supported cycling. Having been going to Taiwan since the mid 80’s, it’s pretty amazing what’s happening over there on the bicycle consumer side. In the 80’s and 90’s you saw almost no one on bikes by choice, but only as a way to get somewhere.

In recent years that has changed big time. And in that same period, many of the industry leaders on the island have taken up cycling as a past time, the government has opened space in parks, and lots of nice shops have opened up. So, in addition to supplying the majority of the world’s high end cycling products, they also have a thriving local market.